Simulation Study for Robot-based Single Point Incremental Forming

The present study investigates the toolpath definition for the numerical simulation of the Single Point Incremental Forming (SPIF). Since the toolpath definition greatly influences the geometrical accuracy of the formed part, substantial research has been taken to properly generate the toolpath. In this paper, two different toolpath strategies were defined: Z-level, and spiral toolpath. A robot program was created using RoboDK to simulate the SPIF process and to test the generated toolpath over a designed workpiece of a truncated cone. The paper also shows how the SPIF numerical simulation was conducted on Abaqus/CAE software. The results demonstrated that the toolpath was properly designed; however, 0.5% relative error was found between the desired and the simulated cone depth due to the SPIF geometric error. To improve the overall accuracy of the SPIF, a combined stiffness-based and closed loop control algorithm is proposed.